By writer and photographer

Jenny Lanyon  

Laurie Reid crosses the final item off his bucket list by telling his family’s story, first on DVD and now in book format: 150 pages including eight colour photo pages, with family tree, maps, recipes and tribute poems.

Laurie and his siblings reminisce about growing up on the dairy farm in Woodenbong, northern NSW, in the 1930s: Milking barefoot on frosty mornings with plenty of butter and cream despite the depression, fancy-dress costumes made by Mum from ex-army parachute silk and purchasing the 1935 V8 Ford ute; Dad never harnessed the horses again.

Family folklore tells of a parson visiting the Reid home in Ireland in the 1870s. He was having trouble getting his horse to settle, so Laurie’s grandfather, James Reid, just a boy at the time, offered to help. When the parson returned he gave James a handful of cabbage seeds as a thank you for his good deed. James planted those seeds, they grew into fine cabbages, he sold them, bought a three-legged ewe with twin lambs, sold those and with the money he bought his passage to Australia. At the end of his life, together with his children, he and his wife had acquired sixteen properties, enough to set each one up.  

Laurie and his wife Heather left that district in 1964, “due to the fear of inbreeding”, Laurie said, to strike out on their own as farmers and graziers on the Central Highlands at Capella. More than fifty years on the family has six properties and are major beef suppliers and feedlotters.

Laurie, who describes himself as ‘just an old ringer’, shares his words of wisdom on starting out in business and what he’d do differently if he had his time over again.